Casting out the Nines: The Powers of Two
by aragonite
Summary: Re-writing the climactic Chapter in THE POWERS OF TWO to fit within the 50th Anniversary. And wouldn't you know, somehow, the Brigadier jumped into it. He's so like that. Will eventually clean up and replace the succeeding chapters as I go. Doctors One through Five, then Eight, and UNIT comes in with a bang. Warning. My hate of computers may have influenced this one...
1. Chapter 1

_A long-overdue cameo for the fantastic awesomeness of Peter Davidson...frankly, a fight scene I wish we could have seen in THE FIVE DOCTORS..._

* * *

Yellow-rustlight glows upon the underbellies of the heavy clouds over the strange sky, casting churning, snakelike shadows before and after him as he crawled beneath the shimmering coronosphere.

His knees had long since bled through the fabric of his trousers and something terrible had happened to his left wrist...it was sodden and sticky and a foul stench arose from the center of the stain.

_I saw the Eye of Harmony swallow up the Master, and I'm cringing at the sight of my own hand..._

_The TARDIS. Find her. FIND TARDIS._

_Can't change without her,_ the one thought hammered home.

_Shouldn't. _

_She'd be so upset._

It was so important all other thoughts melted in its presence.

_TARDIS. _

_TARDIS. _

He gasped over a pile of rubble and scoil; a red brick made blue glass by the heat of a thermonuclear-grade blast sliced his palm open to the thin webwork of bones. The Doctor screamed in the fragile air of the ruined world's air. His strength gave out and his body slumped forward, weak as a kitten's across the lump of jumbled up constructive formation.

In the darkness, he remembers something soft and fuzzy...a reality blurred and fogged by distance just as distance alters perspective...a warping that proves to your brain that you really are seeing something in the physical world.

Why, one had to wonder, did the Time Lords think it was such a good idea to create an outpost for the Matrix on the furthermost planet of their old Empire's borders?

Why did the Lord President think anything was a good idea? But this...this was dreadful.

A meteorite shower sprinkled slow-motion green fireballs over the arching dusk. The Doctor panted to stay conscious, wishing he had two hearts again—even Two's hearts with their erratic and archaic secondary bypass rhythm that made him such a hyperactive, panicky and PTSD reactionary would be better than what he had right now!

The planet groaned pitifully under the weight of chaos. Far beneath its long-cooled crust the Matrix shuffled back and forth, struggling to break free.

Billions of minds preserved in the Matrix, most of them Time Lords, and _no one_ thought to ask if the Matrix itself would acquire intelligence? Or wish to escape its death?

There were twenty million Daleks slipping through Kasterborous—of course the whole planet would get itchy. That would attract the Daleks, who would be sure to postpone their invasion of Gallifrey's Core System long enough to wipe out every dust-atom on this crumbling ball of rock, sand, and long-dead-civilization's-ruins before getting back to the plan of attacking Gallifrey through a Matrix Gateway.

_Matrix. Matrix illusion. All is illusion now. Matrix._

_Illusion._

_Not even a good one,_ he thinks with a ghoulish humor. _Second-rate, paltry..._ Brittle scoil breaks under the weight of his bleeding knees and he falls deeper into the artificial reality of the dying Matrix. Not for the first time, he wondered what deranged acolyte of the Mad God had thought to enslave the Matrix of Gallifrey with the computer Matrixii in this mad bid to win an un-winable war.

_(I hate computers and refuse to be bullied by them!)_

The Doctor caught himself laughing at the memory of himself as Two. Must have been the wish for another heart. He knew he couldn't always remember who he was, but he did (seem to) remember that one. Silly little Two...the funny little man in the big clothes who inspired laughter with his with sad eyes...Yes, Two would applaud if he were here...would be saluting the death of the Matrixii.

_Madman's scheme, crazier than the Master...so much crazier than what the Master could think of...and the Master's dead too...He's dead and I'm dying..._

Something blew up behind the ruined hills.

Dalek.

Taranium mingled in the stain of burning rock-dust.

_I'm dying and this could really be it this time..._

The Doctor crawled forward another few feet, ignoring the numbness setting inside his bones. The Matrix computers nearly won Gallifrey the war, but the cost would have been far, far too high for the Universe. And they thought him the traitor for not joining him? No, he was the Renegade. He was on the side of Life, not in anyone's corner!

The Matrix whispered in his mind, trying to distract him, trying to pull him back to it. It did not want to die, and it was not about to die without one last victim. It taunted him, tickling his broken mind with memories, hoping they would slow him down just enough that it could overwhelm him.

**_[[[AND ESCAPE...ESCAPE TOGETHER YOU AND WE]]]_**

The Doctor had no desire to be the hapless Host of an intelligent computer. He kept going.

He coughed against the rising smoke and dust, and the Matrix gathered its final power, thrust a memory-arrow into the back of his mind: Susan's sobbing face on the other side of the TARDIS. The Doctor groaned aloud.

_**["One day, we shall be back..."]**_

Oh, how his so-much-younger First Self had believed that! The Doctor could have wept for the pain of that innocence lost.

He answered the Matrix' memory-arrow with one of his own:

_**("I am a Time Lord! I walk in Eternity!")**_

There. If anything could hurt the Matrix, it would be the Bohemian's larger-than-life mind.

The Matrix quailed before that booming mind-voice, a Titan feared, and the Doctor crawled forward through a lake of mercury dust. The TARDIS was close...he knew it...

...Another memory-arrow shot into his mind. The Doctor nearly collapsed under its weight. The broken rubble smoothed to tarmac and pressed concrete; a meteroid that was mostly agglomerate spaceship wreckage fused together by gravity slipped over his head

and

Gatwick Airport roared about him as he stood before Polly and Ben.

"_The thing is,"_ Polly said to him, _"this is our world..."_ (Yes, he understood that...)

"_You're lucky, I never got back to mine."_

His sad honesty as he parted ways with Ben and Polly. And in only three years, he would be running from his world with all his might, fear sticking in his throat and numbing his legs as he struggled against the Time Field doomed to trap him, make him their slave.

No more longing for home. They didn't want him. They never wanted him for himself; just wanted him because they couldn't stand the idea of his being free. Tears burned his eyes like the acidic smoke and the pain ran down his cheeks. Perhaps he was wrong to want to live. After the things he'd done...

He'd saved lives but refused to take sides in a war where Time Lords and Daleks both shared culpability. How could he do anything else?

The memory BURNED. The Matrix had found his vulnerability. He'd lost loved ones before, but the pain had never gone away. They'd slept in his mind. Without knowing it, the Doctor swooned forward, his cheek smashing against a sharp-cornered foundation. Reality and digireality blurred together as a concussion wrestled inside his brain-pan.

* * *

The Doctor might have lost the battle with the Matrix at that moment, but computers, even those that carry biodata of Time Lords and relate in soft sentient programs can make grievous errors of judgment. It sensed his loss and sought another to add to the poison.

It showed him Adric.

The Doctor _roared_, rising up on shredded knees, clenching his fingers into his palms as red-orange blood rained down to die on dust and rubble. _They always make that mistake_, he thought dizzily. There were things you didn't do.

And not even the Master pressed him with Adric.

Even the Rani knew better.

Even Seven wouldn't dare. Seven, who had chained Five into his mind and kept him a prisoner, hadn't tried to _provoke_ him-merely lock his freedom to whisper as the voice of his conscience.

This wasn't provocation. This was war.

* * *

The Fifth Doctor flared in the firestorm of the Matrix, leaped into the digireal fogs and screamed into the face of the Matrix' sucking maw. Hot, outraged and wounded, the Cricketeer had been pushed beyond all reason. Five, the number of the werewolf and the moon was full.

The Matrix was seeing this too late.

The Cricketeer placed his back to the digital fog-bank and faced the reality of the torn planet, his smooth and boyish face drawn tight about his skull-bones as he wielded a willowwood bat.

Five. Allegedly the weakest of all the Doctors because his compassion and empathy forced him to feel too deeply and see each issue from too many simultaneous facets. His regeneration had been double-flawed from physical trauma and psychic exhaustion; he had lacked the final cognitive recognition of Three and Four. His age and experience had been wise but crippled in its temporal filters—a crippling that also affected Six.

Five, too pacifist for even the Venusian Aikido that Two had mastered and Three had practiced.

Five had been the most _indecisive_, **but he had _not_ been weak.**

* * *

Five snarled into the face of the Matrix, trainers braced for support in the soft reality of the Matrix/Not Matrix, his eyes burning with a fire none of the Doctors had seen since Two was executed. Blue-green, shifting, opalescent fire flickered and cast its own light into the murk.

Two used to do that when he was pushed too far. His eyes were a warning to friends and foe alike. _Beware when you see the colors of Lungbarrow._

Lungbarrow eyes.

Five had never, _ever_ lacked for courage.

The Doctor rolled over on his back, sliding down from the support of a broken stone pillar as blood bubbled from his third lung down the corner of his mouth. The ground upheaved; long-dried bones of the dead planet's people thrust calcium stakes through the surface—a minefield that would slice the unwary and unlucky to ribbons. He felt a ridiculous laugh escape his throat. Young, tender-hearted idealistic Five's digital programming had broken out of the Matrix' biodata storage tanks with nothing more than the strength of his own copied will, and was standing over him in the Soft Time, cricket bat swinging to meet the next salvo of memory-arrows.

**["_Salix alba var. caerulea_ displays a pyramidal shape upon natural growth which incorporates the strength and tension of the harvested wood."]** Five recited with a furious gleam to his face-too young to have eyes so old-and the bat slapped the next Memory-arrow back to its point of origin, piercing the bank of foggy mental pollution. The Matrix squealed, indignant in its wounding—furious that something would strike back with its own weapons—and blind with rage that one of its own specimens had broken out to fight it.

The Doctor stared (it took less energy than saying anything), and clapped his hand over the region housing that leaking third lung.

**["What most people don't know,"]** Five added almost conversationally as the Matrix ground another round in preparation, **["is that the best willow for a good scrum is female."]**

_I'll try to remember that,_ The Doctor vowed, assuming he survived this digital stupidity.

**["I always thought it just a bit historically amusing that the best female woods came from East Anglia and Essex-one of the last bits of England where the matriarchy survived. Just one of those little temporal jokes, I suppose."] **The Cricketeer cleared his throat, digging his toes into the shifting surface. A fresh wave of glowworm-green fire illuminated his still-shining Lungbarrow eyes. **["The Cosmos seems to be rather full of them."]**

_Compassion said something like that,_ the Doctor had time to think, _When we left the Brigadier in Avalon_-and then—CRUNK! Another mind-arrow growled its way to them. This one was made of iron, dragon-tipped to scream as it passed through the thinning air. Five easily slapped it out of its original trajectory but it dodged him halfway to impact and he only got the front tip; the bolt flew sideways and clattered upon the smoking rubble of the mind-city. The stones caught fire under its impact. The bonfire stank of resin and burning rotting rose-petals-quantum molecules.

Five's shoulders tensed under his summer coat. His supple body locked up like a thermal ratchet inside the padding of his gear.** ["Oh, that is _not_ good,"]** he said under his breath, gaze focused on something very unpleasant that the Doctor couldn't see. His gloved fingers latched tightly around the cane handle of his bat. **[_"Can someone give me a hand so I can hold them off long enough to let me get away?"]_**

[_What_ did I tell you about the mindlash, lad?]

The Doctor couldn't have been more surprised to see Two stepping out of non-reality into the Soft Time of the Matrix.

It is quite one thing to accept you have recurring amnesia. It is quite another to see a diaphanous memory suddenly gain digitally projected flesh not a foot from the tip of your nose!

The Doctor peered up at a self he only barely recollected. _The Cosmic Hobo_, he remembered the Brigadier saying fondly, his trimmed mustache twitching to one side in inward amusement. _Papa Wolf, Benton liked to call you then, though in those days anyone with a Primary School education could have beaten you in a fight...! That never stopped you, though. You nearly died, flinging yourself on a yeti killing Knight. I've never forgotten that, you know. You couldn't win, couldn't possibly win...but you never stopped trying. Not until it threw you down like a doll and knocked you out for the count. As long as I live, I'll never be able to thank you for caring for my men...just as you'll never forgive yourself for not being able to save them..._

_And this?_ The Doctor thought in just a touch of disbelief, was his just-barely-1.70m-past self that tried to pull a _Yeti_ off Knight? _What was I thinking? I'm just a tiny thing!_

The Cosmic Hobo stood erect—all 170 cms of him-in floppy, ill-fitting clothes that made him look even smaller. His wild, messy white hair caught the artronic winds of the digital atmosphere and danced about jadeite eyes set inside the face of a thousand-year leprechaun.

_White hair?_ He frowned, because his damaged memory seemed to be telling him Two wasn't white haired at all. Hair of iron, trapped in a bowl cut...

_...running for his life; running for both their lives amongst palm trees...he was wearing a fur coat then; what? A fur coat? Yelling something, urgently...telling him to stop, change direction, something coming—something bad...the palm trees were whistling soprano alarms in the salty winds...  
_

_...palm trees? Was he in Ireland? _

"Agh!"

This mind-arrow was clever; it nipped past the very tip of Five's bat and smashed into a marble pillar. Sharp chips of rock razored jagged wounds across the Doctor's cheek and bridge of nose and he cried out; the pain was immense.

And the little Hobo twisted on his battered heels to take in the sight of his future self writhing in pain on the broken scoil, clutching his face. His own face darkened; beneath the most ferocious brows any of the Doctors had ever possessed his blue-green eyes glittered in viridescent challenge upon the Matrix.

**["You really think you can stop us just because you hold our biodata?"]** He exclaimed indignantly. And to the current Doctor's astonishment (and perhaps a touch of embarrassment), he stamped his foot like a child, small hands balled into fists by his sides. A child with a temper tantrum.

**["I WILL NOT BE YOUR SLAVE!"]**

A child, but a changeling child; ancient soul trapped in an infant's body. A youth born with the secret of eternal age.

The first Doctor to embrace fear.

And the odd little Hobo he used to be was standing in a face-off with the much taller Cricketeer, lips set in disapproval as he poked his future self in the ribs with a stern forefinger.

["We've had this talk before, lad. Mindlash-you step back, I deal with it. Remember?"]

**["Something like that."]** Five said unconvincingly, and gripped his bat for the next round.

["Impertinence."]

_**["Comes with the dress sense."]**_

Three, the UNIT Doctor had formed digital flesh just behind Two and was stepping to the other side, the folds of his opera cloak making a protecting pair of wings. Three was also far older than the Doctor remembered, solemn as a minister in hemlock-pine velvet (The Evergreen Man) and age lined his face almost as deeply as Two, but he was still tall and very, _very_ strong.

_**["And the manners."]**_

THE DOCTOR had the last word, as always. He leaned into his thigmotropic cane, his heartbeat so low and soft against the others that the Doctor wasn't sure if he had two hearts at all—did he have just one in those days? Many of the Oldblood had just one until they regenerated...but he couldn't remember if Lungbarrow's House was Oldblood.

It hardly mattered. THE DOCTOR's digital form glowered at the wasteland ringing the Matrix' false temple. He drew himself up in his hawkish body, hands clasping the lapels of his frock coat as his large, beautiful round eyes cast disparaging opinions at what he saw. He was old, seemingly frail, but he was tough as an old turkey beneath his rock-hammered bones and his mind's powers were still sharp, still clean despite the hammering attacks of degenerative powers and the memory loss that came with age and the pain of a body that failed and still refused to die.

THE DOCTOR cast his mind out, and threw up a shield as strong as rock-crystal, the power of that mental wall emphasized by the enhancement glowing in the dark blue signet ring upon his right hand.

Signet Ring.

His Signet Ring.

The Doctor glanced down at his own hand, and blinked against a gum of drying blood. He'd found that ring inside the TARDIS console one day and had worn it ever since...the first Doctor to wear it since Two's new hand grew too small to hold it. The ring had clattered to the floor and he'd not paid any more attention to it...hadn't needed it...

...and the Doctor had forgotten all about why his Second Self had walked away from the ring in the first place.

* * *

_I'd like to see a butterfly fit into a chrysalis after it spread its wings...life depends on change and renewal..._

_Change and renewal._

_Change._

_Change._

_Change yourself, or your enemies will change **you**._

* * *

The Doctor blinked through the mist of blood at his hand.

THE DOCTOR'S ring was glowing.

And so was that selfsame ring on his finger.

That never happened before, though he had the vague memory that THE DOCTOR used this ring to enhance his mental abilities...

_Oh, my, that looks awfully angry..._

**["Pythion Crystal."] ** Two sniffed. ** ["Surprised you never tried it on for adornation, Dandy."]**

**["First of all, it fell into the TARDIS like your silly recorder. When you were off your face with your new face, you little Hobo."]** Three shot back with his hawkish chin quivering against the effort to be serious against his rising delight in a fight. Three was laughing, the Doctor realized with no small sense of shock. Laughing at his younger self with spirit and...fondness?

And his legendary thrill of battle.

**["And secondly, that shade of blue would never do, old chap. That's a winter shade. I'm an autumn."]**

**["You're _something else_, all right..."]**

They could hear the Matrix gearing up for the next attack, the clatter and grind of psychic cogs.

Three faced the rest of his digital selves, his strong mouth turned upwards along parallel angles to his eyes. He was as unique to the Doctors as Two; where Two had buried himself to the extent that even his ownselves barely remembered him, Three was the most serious, and capable of battle like none other. He was the last Doctor to be designed for conflict, and the only one of them _comfortable_ in it; a part of him relished it even though he never let it take control of his own impulses.

And THE DOCTOR, who to this day would have still bashed that wounded caveman's head in with a rock, tipped his head forward as he grasped his lapels, granting benediction to his larger self...and Two...smaller, silly-looking, clumsy-looking and very, **very** deadly little Two, grinned up at his successor as the electronic winds threw his hair into new coordinates of untidiness. **["Hi, Dad!"] **The black tooth left from childhood prodded the eye as he grinned. The child of them all, THE DOCTOR'S one and only chance to actually be a child before he grew up and became a more sober and respectable renegade.

**["Ready. Make it count."] **THE DOCTOR nodded at Two.

And Three turned his magnificent leonine head upon Five.

**["You heard the old fellow. Make it count."]**

Five turned to grin tightly over his shoulder at his latest self. His longish canines gleamed in the clouded light (werewolf teeth). His boyish face was angelic in the dying light of the planet. Silky blond hair lifted in the static charge of atmosphere. The next Adric-memory-arrow slid through the tender reality, shrieking with a high-pitched sonic challenge designed to unsettle the enemy. The Cricketeer leaped forward, striking it with the precision of a fine instrument. It burst against a patch of computerized fog, melting the illusion in a wildfire patch.

_**["If you're going to do that,**__"]_ he shouted into the fog that was the dying brain of the Matrix, [_**"Go up against someone who wasn't trained by W. G. Grace!"]**_

_**["Showoff."] **_Three said fondly. He had his sonic screwdriver out and was aiming it full-frontal into the boiling fog of manipulated Time. Something hissed and recoiled under its wavelength assault. [_**"You need to sit down with him, you know. He is far too much like you."]**_

_**["Jealous."] **_Two smirked, but a nanosecond later the pretend humor was gone from both antagonists and they were facing off the cloud of mind pollution. The time for joking was done.

* * *

**["Great balls of fire, will you get out of the way?"]** THE DOCTOR barked at Five.

_**["I need a clean shot!"] **_Five protested, lifting his bat in a stance that was not precisely according to the good old rules of the green.

_**["Let the Hobo do the job!"] **_Three yanked Five back, letting Two stand before the others in point. **["You know what happened the last time!"]**

**["DO IT!"]** Two screamed.

_Last time?_ The Doctor was not so out of it that he didn't notice that odd phrase in the softness of Time.

_Two whirled to him, his snow-white hair fluttering in the winds of war**. ["Get out of here, boy! If it gets too bad **_HE_** will wake up! And we don't want that!"]**_

_T_wo was screaming at the top of his lungs as his otherselves clustered in to vanguard his plotted path.

He.

The Fourth Doctor.

The Bohemian.

The Sleeping Titan.

Horror washed The Doctor at the thought of their Fourth waking up. The Doctor ignored the pain and took off running. But this was still the realm of the Matrix, and he could still hear/see/smell/touch/feel/heart what was happening.

* * *

_**["Just because I can doesn't mean I should!"]**__ The Cricketeer_ was shouting at The Hobo.

_**["You may be better than us, but you don't have to rub it in our faces!"] **_Two's words were joking, but his face was pale and corpse-calm. [_**"Get ready, all of you. I can hear it coming. Twenty-four seconds."]**_

And to the Doctor's horror, Two slowly pulled away, small shoulders squaring inside his battered frock coat and bracing himself against the carnivorous fog coming their way. A memory resurfaced centuries lost: Two, coolly and quietly and single-handedly taking on an army vanguard of Ice Warriors, prepared to die with each step of the way but fighting to live until the enemy fleet was destroyed.

_Because they'd planned to attack Susan's World._

_And when finally caught and confronted:_

**_"You have destroyed an entire fleet!"_**

**_"You tried to destroy a world."_**

_No venom in the statement, just quietly stating a simple fact. The King of Elfland patiently explaining to the humans who wish to explore: "Very well, but if man ventures where he is not wanted, or chooses to destroy, then do not blame us if we play tricks."_

_That was Two, through and through, and through. The Changeling Ancient in the body of a child. An inexorable force for Neutral Good._

**_"Kill him!"_**

_And Two stood ready for the killing blast, his head tilted back peacefully, almost smiling, ready for the death about to come. He didn't even try to save himself...until he saw Jamie de-mat before him and then the accepting warrior turned frantic, whirling, jumping over the improbable consoles, grabbing the weapon in the Ice Warrior's hand and aiming the charge at the commander. Jamie screamed his war cry, "Rock of the Boar!"_

_And a cross-memory threaded across the Doctor...the Brigadier, shocking him with his own war-cry of the Stewarts with "Rock of the Cormorant!"_

* * *

_**["Ohno."]**_ The Cricketeer gasped. Three grabbed him and triangulated him to a point just behind the space betwixt THE DOCTOR and The Hobo.

_**["Twenty-two."]**_THE DOCTOR muttered. [_**"Twenty-one. Twenty. Nineteen..."] **__The bluestone signet ring glowed on his finger in the madlight._

_The Doctor felt a stab of heat and looked down._

_His ring...THE DOCTOR'S ring...was glowing in its own echo. The two stones pulsed in synchronicity against the muddled atmospheric light. Heat pulsed into his body through the stone, providing energy…warmth…_

_Strength._

_The ability to move._

_Somehow THE DOCTOR was re-wiring his brain into unheard of abilities to knit through its damage and re-route his body's defenses. His blood stopped wasting itself with escaping his body. His damaged lung sealed off; the others filled with precious air._

Something howled in the nattering darkness forming within the choking Matrix. It chattered amongst itselves and giggled.

The raining stars glittered a green glowing mess over the crushed fragments of marble ruin.

_**["...eighteen..."]**_ THE DOCTOR whispered. Hands long rendered painful from the debilitation of age and disease knotted his bones and tendons into hard cords as he clutched his lapels. **["Seventeen."]**

_**["Jehoshaphat!"]**_ Three swore. **[_"Keep running!"]_** He bellowed at the Doctor.** [_"Get past the Styx! NOW! You won't survive this, and you must survive!"]_**

* * *

The Doctor ran.

He never knew how he did it, even years after, when he regenerated into the patient persona of the War Doctor, and finally into the superior brain of Thirteen...but later, his fragmented memories strongly indicated the possibility that his first three biodatized selves had actually broken out of the Matrix' chains and fought in the Soft Time in his behalf.

Impossible as that sounded, it might explain why his ability to recall them was numbed and faulty for almost a year after his regeneration into the War Doctor.

It was not supposed to be at all possible for a biodata-logged Time Lord to break free from the Matrix... but the Doctor knew "possible" was not a w rd he liked.

His Fifth Self was called "The Supreme Controller" by the Ogrons.

His Third Self was called "The Great Wizard."

His Second, "The Indestructible Man."

And then of course, there was THE DOCTOR. The Wise Old Chieftain.

The first of them; the greatest of all of them. The one who stood up and faced the crushing mistakes of their world, and said, "Not so," for himself and Susan. The first Rule Breaker, the first Clown, the first to begin to accept the fact that Trouble was his Fate.

The Doctor fell, and something broke inside one leg. By this point in reality, Time was just beginning to implode upon the 16th and 27th Temporal streams. A Conundrum flew out of the 19th Dimension and screeched as it vanished into a travelling Nexus. He fell forward into a patch of mist that smelled of sewage and singular dimensions and a black tendril of matter-memory crawled against his throat, seeking asylum.

The impact knocked him quite out of his head long enough that he didn't know where or when he was. All he knew was the scent of dust and the Matrix energy leaking into reality, and mismatched streams of dynamic logic into the space-time continuum. The Styx was like that; not completely fluid or solid. And here he was in the middle of its currents when he didn't quite know up from down.

The blow was far stronger than he'd realized. For unknown units of Time he'd sprawled upon the shattered bones of the planet, unaware and uncaring.

It would not be a bad time to die...just because he had a few generations left didn't mean he was supposed to live through them...

**"_A tear, Sarah Jane? No, don't cry...where there's life there's..."_**

_You Dandy! _the Doctor swore at his third self's memory._ Damn you for never giving up. Now I can't!_

Blood pooled inside his navel from a slow-leaking slash over his ribs. He groaned and kept crawling. Behind him another explosion, and something screamed as it died a thousand reality-deaths. Some instinct told him Five and Two had just done something very painful to the Matrix. Well, final on Five's part; Two was always more than happy to destroy something computer-related.

**"_We are always in trouble! Isn't it extraordinary!"_**

_Prophetic words from THE DOCTOR..And what had I just been telling Grace about trust...? _

_He's brave,_ The Doctor thought dazedly. He'd never realized until now, just how very brave his Fifth Self was, and it was the same bravery motivating Two. _The two really were a lot alike. The bravest of all of us because both of them would willingly sacrifice their own self-identities to save lives._

CRACK.

A supercharged pillar of atmospheric energy slapped the smoking ruin of the Matrix Outpost behind his back. The Doctor could hear ghosts, both artonic and logical, shriek and scatter to the winds. Sharp, sour scorchlings flitted past his face.

He kept going.

**["You want us to surrender?"]** Three was shouting his mocking disbelief into a fresh wave of Matrix' onslaught. **[Are you as stupid as you are mad?"]** His SSD poised like a bow against the rising tidal wave of digital advection. ** ["YOU HURT US! JUST BECAUSE YOU WISHED IT! AND YOU WANT US TO SURRENDER?"] His large, fine nose flared. ["WE ARE THE DOCTOR! WE NEVER SURRENDER, YOU RIDICULOUS FAKE BRAIN!"]  **Something squealed in the distance.

**["NO!"]** Three bellowed with a force of lung-power that would have impressed Zagreus. **["YOU LISTEN TO ME!"]**

And THE DOCTOR pitched in, arthritic fingers clutched painfully upon his lapels as his bluestone ring beamed a pure azure light into the shrieking, squirming, tryingtogetaway fog:

**["Never Again, you Computerized, foolish lump!"]**

**["I hate computers! I will not be bullied by them!"] ** The Hobo shrieked, his eyes wild and unfocused, and turning to sunset malachite, his mind doing the focusing as he shielded the Cricketeer from the fresh wave of arrows.

The Matrix must have been angered; it thrust three fresh mind-arrows at the digital Doctors. Even as the Cricketeer swung his bat against the first, the hobo scowled, lifting a small hand. The remaining missiles clattered against the broken stones, screeking as they burst from the inside out.

The Matrix howled, its mouth of a door flapped uselessly upon its artificial intelligence-hinges. A wind swept up, brushing the carnivorous fogs across the ruined crust of the planet. THE DOCTOR staggered backwards, his aged skeleton fighting the weight of the rising storm, but his mind kept strong and the bluestone ring on his hand glowed with cold, deadly intent against the enemy that was the Matrix.

**["Brave Heart,"]** The Cricketeer panted. His hat was long gone in the rubble, and his maize-silk blond hair fell across his smooth forehead like a fan. He leaned forward with his bat, breathing hard.

The Hobo lifted ferocious black brows. **["Just a simple levitation. A childish trick. Now stop playing games and open these doors. Or are you afraid to meet me face to face?"]**

Icy words ripped out of time in the frozen highlands of the Det Sen Monastary.

Not a quote out of Time...

A dare.

The Doctor stopped in his broken flight long enough to gulp down a rising lump of dread in his throat.

A moment echoed by the flutter inside his otherselves.

The Clown was not clowning.

This was not good.

The Doctor took off running as fast as he could, a prickle of fear clawing down his spine at what had just happened. The expression of resolution on Three's face had told him everything.

Things were about to go Boom.

When the little Hobo stopped playing the Fool...even an Emperor Dalek fled.

**["Cross the Styx, my boy!']** THE DOCTOR shrilled. Before him the fog cringed in the path of the blue light off his ring. **["It's your only chance!"]**

**["Don't give up! We'll send you some help at the end!"**] The Cricketeer stumbled backwards, blanching against an electronic scream as the Matrix roared its insanity. With heavy limbs he lifted his bat for another round; the willowwood wobbled as his shoulders trembled.

**["Get to the TARDIS!"]** Three barked. His SSD squeaked, and the first clump of fog quailed under the sonic attack.

The Doctor tasted ions, and dust, and the digital memory of blood.

Yes. The TARDIS.

TARDIS.

TARDIS.

TARDIS.

The dying Matrix was clouding his thoughts with its mind-pollution. It swirled dirty yellow biodata fog around his bloody fingers and whispered through the ruined city. He blinked to get its grit out of his eyes and his palm scraped against a humming plank of wood.

TARDIS..?

A subsonic wail fluttered. He flinched backwards, forgetting himself and the sharp stones stabbed at his ribs when he fell back. Dazed cross-eyed from the impact, the Doctor blinked at the ruined sky but all he got was more blood in his eyelids and a new glare of green fire slashing his retinas from the slow-motion hail of meteorites.

**["Hold on, Doctor!"]**

Oh, now that _was_ ridiculous, the Doctor snorted blood out of his nose, finally worn down enough to laugh at himself. That actually sounded like...

Oh, dear.

"When did they copy _you_ into the Matrix?" The Doctor wheezed, spitting a fine rain of blood over the dusty rubble.

And with a wink and a quirk of his always-slightly-smiling mouth, the Brigadier twinkled down at him.

**["Since I married the Queen Regent of Avalon, of course."]** The Matrix-Born Brigadier pulled out his old service revolver as he spoke, as solid as any reality could get when it was under attack, planetwide. ** ["You just can't keep out of trouble, can you?"]** He sighed. **["Oh, that's good."]** He said out loud. **["I see you couldn't shake it off at the Styx. Stubborn things."]**

? The Doctor took in a breath, held it, and struggled to push himself up. "Get away!" He protested. "I know you're just a copy, but I don't want to see you killed just because I can't get inside the TARDIS!"

**["Poppycock."]** The Brigadier sniffed. He drew a bead at something in the collecting grey fogs and pulled the trigger. [**"Even the Matrix-born aren't what you Time Lords think they are...can't blame you for that,"]** he added confidentially. **["You're not dealing with just digital copies, you know. You're dealing with UNIT!"]** His lips spread, tight and firm in resolve. The Brigadier never flinched in battle...but nor did he ever smile at it.

_There was a time when I accused him of just...killing._ The Doctor remembered enough of that terrible day that he was ashamed. The Brigadier had _never_ liked to kill. He loved how he only knew himself when he was fighting for his life, but he loved peace and the comforts of home—all the more so because hearth and home and children was denied to him as long as he was in service. He never flinched from war and it was that lack of flinching that had made the Doctor believe he was too willing to shed blood.

_I was hundreds of years his senior, and yet I wasn't wise enough to understand him. He had to fight. He had to. Because his life was pledged in the defense of others. I had pledged myself to life in a different aspect. I underestimated his selflessness and called it stupidity. It wasn't his fault that he didn't believe he was important..._

**["You'll be safe and sound once you get into the TARDIS."]**The Brigadier told him. ["You can-"] The soldier paused, tipping his head to one side, listening to something on the artronic winds.** ["He_ isn't _regenerating yet?"] He asked it. ["Well, you're the boss. Right. No, no, that's not a problem. Yes. Ready."]**

"What?" The Doctor asked weakly, just before he doubled up with a spasm of coughs. Blood painted the dry stones and the first of the pursuing dragon arrows shattered itself upon the surface of the dying world.

**["Creag an Sgairbh!"]**

Rock of the Cormorant. The cairn of the Lethbridge-Stewarts' doom. The clan proclaimed the address of their grave when they entered battle to not only prove their fearlessness of battle, but to let the enemy know where their bodies would go at the end of the day.

**["A Gordon! A Gordon!"]**

His mother's clan. So ferocious in battle, they had to warn the enemy they were coming so they would have time to prepare for death or retreat.

The Brigadier shouted his Gaelic at the top of his (at least they were working) lungs as he ripped something glittering and silvery from around his throat. It clinked against the marble chunks in his wake as he ran, weapon at ready. His UNIT badge glowed in the dying planetdawn much like THE DOCTOR'S ring. With his clan's war-cry shimmering in the air, the human charged.

And UNIT followed.

The Doctor stared, numb with awe as soldier after soldier poured out of the nether, weapons at ready, weapons blazing into the digital mist.

And this time, UNIT's bullets were working.

Benton paused in the solidifying reality to give the Doctor his famous grin. **["Just like the old days, sir. Rescuing you from the thick of it."] ** With a sly tip and a wink for finally getting the last word he took off running with his rifle parallel to his chest. Yates followed after; scolding Ancelin for trying to wear a UNIT badge above his helm.

**["Brigadier, your husband has a hard head!"]**

**["Shame,"] **Bambara tutted without the least bit of sincerity. Her own weapon was a deadly-looking little thing, a magnet-revolver the Doctor was fairly certain hadn't been invented until some 400 years past her natural death. **["You've got your orders, UNIT!"]** The woman barked. **["The Brigadier is leading! We're going Zulu today! Tell the Cavers to take the right with me, Knight! The Brigadier is taking the Left! Shaka Plan! Horns of the Bull, gents!" ]**

Knight? At first the Doctor thought she meant her husband, but a long-dead face picked up the end and smiled at him.

Captain Knight.

**["That Brigadier, he's a demon for recruiting."] ** The young man confided. **["Doesn't let being dead stand as an excuse. Up you go, sir. The Bardo Plain's not too happy with this Matrix of yours right now. It asked us to give it a hand, so I daresay the Matrix is about due for a nasty shock."]**

"Brigadier!" The Doctor choked, but another human was running after the big man in olive greens; a much smaller human, a man in greying brown hair cropped short in front and tied in the back. A kilt protected his thighs and knit trews the rest.

_"Jamie!_"

But how could it be Jamie? The Jamie he knew was young, and this one was a middle-aged man with limbs thickened with the solidity of maturity.

The little human paused in the middle of his charge, _skein dhu_ in his stocking, sword in left hand, but a modern revolver in his right. More than anything that convinced the Doctor he wasn't seeing a delusion: Jamie had always been an enthusiastic anachronism, a magpie for Time, picking and choosing the bits of the Ages he liked and shrugging the rest aside. He was from too much a primitive culture to prefer something because it was "blending in" with the rest of things.

**["Get tae the TARDIS, Doctair!"]** The human chided in his old scolding/mother hen familiarity. **["We're buyin' ye Time! Thot's all a Time Laird needs!"]**

And with a final whoop and a _Craige an teure!_ He was gone.

"Jamie..." The Doctor was strangling on a welling pool of his own blood. He cast his head aside and vomited the excess out of his lungs. Deep in the fog, Gaelic imprecations shivered the air.

And he saw what the Brigadier had cast upon the stones.

A TARDIS key.

Numb at this latest example of bizarre reality on top of his day, the Doctor picked up the key with fingers slick with blood. It was an older model key, made to fit into the metal lock itself as opposed to the more traditional Time Lord keys that slipped into a lock hidden behind that human-like metal lock. It looked like it had just been made off a key shop in London.

It smelled like heather and seawater.

It was Two's key...

_I was so afraid of the sea when I was him. And yet I always came back to it._

_But that was me back then. To go where I was afraid..._

Holding his breath, the Doctor heaved up, spun, and flung himself against the old TARDIS. In one stab (all he had the strength for), the key knifed into the locking mechanism between the Chameleon Skin and the TARDIS herself.


	2. Chapter 2

Thought lost in the hard drive crash, accidentally discovered, whew! What a relief!

Notes: a Time Lord's single life span is considered possible at 10,000 years-the same way we consider OUR lifespan no more than 100 years, and a life term in prison is (usually) no more than 99 years per sentence. But we do agree, the Doctor sees life in terms of experience more than mileage!

* * *

She _sang_, piercing the veil covering his eyes and mind. He heard the door open. He smelled artronic energy building across her floor like a static charge: honey, cinnamon, cedar. Ozone and ions. He caught the perfume of physical arithmetic—sweet and citrusy—his body lifted in response, and he made it through the doorway on his own two feet instead of by crawling.

Then he fell over.

The floor was cool and smooth against his cheek. The controls were going utterly madcap, just like his first regeneration. His mind didn't remember that time, but his body did. It asked him for permission to take over, and he gave it freely. His eyes closed and cell by cell, the lindos held back for so long fluttered and thinned, its petals unfurling...

"**Not just yet, Lad..."**

He stood over himself, his past self looking down and considering this strange new future he would become. A little man, with a mirthful/mournful face under sloppy hair and a mask of snapping green little eyes.

The Cosmic Hobo was transparent in the echoes of the Digital storm raging outside the old Timeship. He was small, but…the Doctor blinked in astonishment.

_I thought I was smaller than that_, he realized. Remembered wrong? "That little fellow" was how he'd heard himself described, time and Time and Time again, but his past self was barely shorter than he was.

And looking at himself was like looking into a too-long-forgotten mirror: He looked…and he saw…

And he Remembered.

_"I wanted to look smaller than I really was,"_ he thought, almost luminous as the epiphany went through his head. He hadn't remembered incorrectly, but incompletely—what a relief!

His tired eyes raked over his past, as his past smiled gently down.

Unlike the aspect outside, this Doctor was considerably younger; his tousled hair gleamed a dark iron, and his trousers were Tartan print; baggy but not quite as baggy as the beginning of his Change.

He must have said something, or voiced his thoughts out loud.

The little Hobo twisted his mouth up on one side, his eyes changing to more blue than green as he clasped at his lapels—a very Original Doctor pose.

"**That was Polly's doing, you know,"** he confided. **"The TARDIS and I quite liked them baggy, but she didn't. So every night when everyone was asleep, she sneaked into my room and took in just a little bit off the hem and leg. I couldn't let her know I knew...she was so pleased with herself but the TARDIS wasn't. She had her own ideas on how I should look!" **He tilted his head to one side, musing backwards across centuries in his mind**. "I wonder how they ever agreed to get along?" He murmured. "Ah, well. Secrets not mine to keep, and all that."**

The little wanderer rubbed his hands together briskly as he glanced about the TARDIS with an askance expression. **"Well! You're in a bit of a pickle, lad. And it isn't your Time to change just yet...that's the Faction Paradox for you. When they pick a fight with the CIA there's only one victim in **_**that**_** war..."** He tutted in disgust for the Faction and slipped to the Console of the TARDIS with a single look of disdain at the room. ** "Remind me to apologize to the Big Tall Lightbulb...at least he knows how to keep a clean TARDIS..."**

That stung. "My TARDIS is clean!" The Doctor protested.

"**Well how is anyone supposed to know? Almost as bad as the later boys after you...hmph. And you're letting the coral grow out? Nice idea—bad practice. Next thing you'll know, your friends will be knocking off bits and pieces and taking them home as souvenirs...like that Time Agent with the pumpkin grin..." **The Hobo was still transparent, but the TARDIS' console obeyed for him as easily as if he were physically within the Cubed Dimensions. He spread his fingers and glittering dust trailed in his wake to settle across the surfaces of the TARDIS.

"**Hello, old Girl. I hope you don't mind that grinning lunatic from Torchwood is growing a piece of you on his desk...oh? Well, no, I have to agree. As far as your Type goes, the more the merrier...but let's not tell him, eh?" **And he gave the Console a conspiratorial wink and a pat on the Time Rotor, even though he had to stretch to his full height to do so.

"**I never knew I was mad," The Doctor muttered, and paused to cough up more blood.**

"**We haven't been mad since Six, and the beginning of Seven, and those were lessons worth the learning."** The younger Doctor turned his face as he spoke, and the dimensions shifted; he turned older, his gunmetal grey mop withering to a deep, glossy platinum and his body lost its suppleness to grow thick and sturdy as a fossilwood trunk. Like Jamie's body. **"Once we tasted madness we were never its victim again. You may not remember, but the rest of you does. Oh, there we are! Got it!"** A grinding shriek complained from the depths of the Time Rotor.

"**Hold on, you! This is going to be a bit of a bumpy ride!** His new/younger/previous self clapped his hands in childlike delight. **Marvellous! I haven't piloted through a baby wormhole since I was running from the Toymaker! **He bounced on the balls of his feet, gleeful. **Goodness, what a flight that was! It was almost worth it when he finally caught me!**

"What? _What_?" Maybe his amnesia wasn't that bad of a thing. The Toymaker? The same Toymaker who turned him into a ventriloquist puppet? _"What are you doing with my TARDIS!"_

"Hmph. I just _told_ you. Dealing with Faction Paradox."

And that quickly, the grey-haired little man was completely in reality, leaning forward, humming snatches of melody that blended with the TARDIS' time rotor.

"Faction Paradox." The Doctor repeated, and for some reason, everything suddenly made sense. "Someone sent you." He breathed, and this time there was no blood. Something was happening in his body but it wasn't regeneration. "The Faction…(cough!)…Sworn enemies to the death of the CIA! The Interventionists sent you! Because _you_ were their Doctor."

"Is _that_ what they call me?" The pale head shot up, and the elfin green eyes were wounded and scored.

The Doctor swallowed.

"Is that what they call me?" He repeated gently. "What's Goth been saying about me? Is that what they call me?"

"Sometimes." The Doctor admitted meekly.

They called him worse. "The Tame Time Lord", "The Scaredy Cat", and other things. And so many of those agents were like the utterly beyond redemption Cavis, who killed and ate children, tortured UNIT soldiers and Silurian pacifists to death for amusement, and gloated in hurting others. The Doctor was certain he wasn't the only one who breathed relief when the Brigadier's wife decapitated her.

Yes, Interventionists could be amoral to the point where even the Master was appalled. And his Second self had been forced into being their peer. When murderers and rapists reveled in the anarchistic freedom of doing as they pleased under the Interventionist's flag, the Doctor remained their reluctant compatriot, but never their friend or companion. He trusted them not; nor did they, and over the centuries of service an uneasy wall loomed between them, until even the hardest of the criminals chose to avoid the Cosmic Clown because he could still teach them the meaning of fear.

He hated it. He hated every moment of being their slave. But he took the punishment and exile on, accepted it so his future selves would have the freedom he could no longer have.

And to cause some trouble of his own.

The Doctor was embarrassed. He would have done the same thing as this little version. This was his Trickster Self, the one who said, "You can learn a lot from traps."

If the CIA thought he was their weapon, they would treat him as such.

But this weapon was always vigilant. Always waiting. And ever patient for his opportunity.

They knew, the Doctor realized with the strange, intuitive foresight that came upon his awareness on rare occasions. His younger selves had known of their Second's secret, shameful fate as the CIA lapdog. But the memory of his role as a double agent had faded with time and regenerations...like the memory of snow as it became water.

Why would he forget?

Oh.

OH.

_Because he needed to forget!_ Bury the past in safety...

For there would be a time in the future in which he would have to remember.

OH.

The Doctor coughed again, and his little self shook his head, dismissing the topic.

"Try not to talk just yet. Give the nanobites a chance to fix you up." His little self frowned at him from over the Rotor. "Those were the last of them, I'm afraid. After that you're on your own so try to stay out of trouble for a bit, hm?" He clicked his tongue. "I'm only supposed to pull you out before the Faction eats you for supper, and this is a little more help than they wanted me to give." The TARDIS shuddered all the way to the Eye of Harmony, and they both glanced at the floor.

"What in the _world_ did you put in there?"

"Er...oh...nothing. Nothing."

"That didn't sound like a "nothing." Two scowled suspiciously. Oh, dear. That scowl. "You didn't drop anything organic in the Eye, did you?"

"No! No, no, no, no, no, no, not at all." 'Drop' was quite the wrong word to describe what happened with the Master. "Look, I feel much better. Thank you. But I can take it from here."

"Mmmn." That look coming off his smaller self would have fried an icicle to a charred, smoking crisp. "Just rest, old fellow. I'm popping off as soon as we get you through this wormhole."

"You...you can just set the controls you know." The Doctor was finally on his feet, breathing hard and sweating. That third lung was not only healed, it was jumping up and down in its eagerness to show off how much better it was than the other lungs. The Doctor hoped the excess oxygen wouldn't make him pass out.

"And I thought Double-oh-Doctor was hard-headed..." The other muttered. "Oh, very well." He sniffed and stepped aside for a moment, patting down his pockets. "There we are." He said in satisfaction." He pulled out a tiny box and with a jaunty whistle popped it in a drawer under the console. "Better not open _that_ one just yet." He warned, wagging his finger. "Give yourself a few lifetimes first."

"Did you just...cheat the Timestream?" The Doctor asked numbly.

"Heavens, no. I'm restoring a balance." A cheeky grin followed this bizarre statement. "Dear oh dear, you _are_ an innocent. Tch. No, this is _not_ cheating. I'm simply evening out some of the damages the CIA and the Faction has been gleefully inflicting on the Universe's natural and proper state of things." He sighed. "Wasn't it you who said they were playing tug o' war and you were the rope?"

"I...how did you know about that?"

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that." His little self said in a pitying voice. "Well, you are the rope, my boy. But what happens to the game when the rope doesn't act like a rope?" He beamed and concentrated on his part of the controls. The TARDIS made a self-satisfied noise like a purring cat. "I know, dear." The little man soothed. "I know. It's all right; he's doing splendidly, isn't he?" He lifted his head as the timeship shuddered in the aft. "As soon as the coordinates send us through, drop me off at the Eleven Days' Empire." He fished out a SRD that looked suspiciously like the one he used to have in his 6th incarnation.

"WHAT?!" All four lungs chipped in to help him with communication. "Why not a cruise to Mondas by way of Telos? Or beautiful Skaro in the summer? Or-oh! I have it! The Horsehead Quasar! The Great Intelligence might still be there! THE ELEVEN DAYS' EMPIRE? That's the centre of the Faction's power!"

"You don't say!" Two practically gleamed, and his teeth glistened in the flickering lights. "Look, I'm just following orders, so if you don't want to sign on for your own 10,000-year term of service, I'd suggest you just help me out here. You're the only one of me who knows those co-ordinates, which is lucky for you because that's how I made them persuade me to rescue you out of that mess."

BLOOP.

They both glanced down at the readings.

"There we go, time on target!" The little man clapped his hands and rubbed them together briskly before pulling out a tiny hand-held computer—CIA model right down to the tiny hunting-hook insignia. "Oh, my. So _that's_ the Grandfather, is it? What a face!" His own made a rubbery twist of amazed distaste and tapped his chin with the SRD-a casual misuse of a piece of equipment that probably cost more than the TARDIS. "Got a frown like the ghost of Christmas Cancelled!"

"That's my line!" The Doctor glared up from computing the fresh lines of coordinates to the Empire.

"Yes, and I'm brilliant with them." Two hummed an aria under his breath, tabbing a few navigational algorithms over the little screen, transferring the Doctor's data into his little machine.

"Where's your TARDIS?" The Doctor asked desperately.

"Hmn? Oh. She's here. I had to hide her inside the molecules of yours. That's why she's being very musical, didn't you know? Must be interesting for her to be in two places at once."

"Well, we wouldn't know, would we?" The Doctor asked sardonically.

A grin was his reward. "Yes, definitely on the mend." The little one chirped. "Right. Almost there…" He began to move away from the Console, facing the door.

"Wait!" The Doctor blinked sweat out of his eyes. "Before you go...!"

The little renegade—the renegade's renegade—paused and turned his head. "?"

"Some of us…know what you did." The Doctor swallowed hard. "Not just to save us...but to save others. And the Universe. We know." He repeated.

The little Hobo stood stock-still, colorless from shock.

"You…know?" He whispered.

"All this time…they thought they were playing you for their slave…but you were playing them right back." The Doctor gulped hard, dizzy from the too-rapid changes within as the nanites scolded, cajoled and stitched his body back into place. Ouch. "You're the reason...they never completely regained the power they craved, isn't it? You kept them from..." He gulped. "Being as bad as the Daleks in the long run of things...

"You told me once…in California…memory isn't that important, so long as it changes who you are on the inside…you can be a better person without remembering why you are…" the Doctor shook his head, light-minded from the hum of his brain as the nanites fixed something wrong with his eardrums. He reached up, touching his forehead. "Something like that. I remember the gist if not the words."

"My dear fellow, take it easy now…"

"We're proud of you!" The Doctor snapped.

"I…What?" The Hobo asked in a voice to match his tiny stature.

"I don't know how long you've been working for them. I don't know how much longer, or if you _ever_ will be free…that's why they kept using the rest of us over time, isn't it? A mission here and there…_you were already working for them in conflicting missions!_ It's so awful, so brilliant. Borusa must have thought about it...or Goth. It was Goth, wasn't it? Pulled you...me...out of your own Timestream so they'd always have a Doctor to solve their dirty problems. And no one would ever know. Not even Romana would know, would she? Because no one remembers you very well, and Our Timestreams are still progressing...

"...They make you exist alongside us as a ghost, a Scorchling out of Time, doing what they said, so even if you died it wouldn't permanently damage the Timestream." Oh, this was awful. "It's sheer genius and it's terrible and I'm glad you're fighting them!

"How many times did you offer to take our place?" He asked, and lifted his hands. "Don't answer that. That would be depressing. I just want you know…to remember…you don't have to play the fool with us all the time...we're proud of you." The Doctor whispered it.

The little man was thunderstruck with astonishment, and for that length of time as his TARDIS melted back into her own reality with him, the centuries of bitter servitude eroded right off his face. He looked young again, the aspect Grandfather Paradox disparagingly called "The Cosmic Child." He looked like the little boy he had been in the beginning.

_The little boy I was supposed to be,_ the Doctor thought painfully. _My only chance to be a child again. The Time Lords took that from me._

And the Cosmic Child _smiled_.

It was a _real_ smile this time. Warmth glimmered in those changing eyes, Lungbarrow lights dancing like so many party-sparklers under the ceiling lumen.

The child in the ancient body _laughed_, bubbling with glee and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, fingers knitted together at his waist. He threw back his head, dislodging that glorious mop of gleaming silver hair, and laughed out loud, carried away but the momentum.

The Wise Child, the Doctor remembered. He played the fool because he truly was wise. Everything THE DOCTOR wanted to be, he was in this mussed-up little boy in the loose clothes and floppy haircut.

It was no wonder the Time Lords feared this fey aspect enough to execute him.

A Child is capable of great violence and terrible, swift retribution. A temper tantrum from a Child can bring down galaxies, shake foundations, crack planets. A child's greed can leave nothing for others. A Child's hate can poison oceans; their craft and guile can commit the most atrocious crimes.

But there are good Children, and bad Children.

And few beings are as capable of forgiving the way a Child can.

Or love as deeply and whole-heartedly.

A Child plays and knows why he plays.

And if they believe there is something wrong, a Child will never stop protesting, never stop fighting it. Give them a bad rule and they will break it—or find away around it as they smile and pretend to obey.

And a Child never, ever, ever forgets.

"Thank you, my boy." The Cosmic Hobo said simply, and flipped his head to one side like a curious little bird, his small hands clasped before his waist. His image faded from the Doctor's dimension back into his own.

But his smile lingered in the Doctor's memory, much like the Cheshire Cat's.

* * *

The Doctor recovered slowly. Part of it was the multiple shock of being healed partly by nanobites (too quick for comfort as the joke went), and partly by the digital copy of the Original Doctor's mind powers.

He wasn't the same after that. Both did much to help him recover the centuries of broken, scattered memories. It was often bewildering, and disorienting, but the comfort he learned to take from the re-integration of his lost past was incalculable.

It helped him get through the next string of centuries, as he struggled with mixed success to alleviate the damage the Time Lords and Daleks were both doing to a Universe he loved so dearly.

Sometimes he simply fought the good fight alone, for Companions were precious but ultimately caught up in their own aspect of the fighting. It was hard to let them go, but they had that right, and he satisfied himself with visits.

He caught glimpses of himself here and there, past and future, nudging along events so they would fall into their natural pattern.

Sometimes he caught traces of Compassion's TARDIS, and a bit of Fitz, or Evelyn, and he knew none of them were idle either.

Space Station Chimera vanished in a cloud of Normality one day, and he wondered which of his-selves was responsible for hiding it away from the Daleks.

He did suspect, but it was better not to chase that down. Ultimately he had to trust himself to do the right thing.

The years of his life grew long, and he he grew a little harder, a little less wide-eyed, but he treasured life as much as ever. After all, life was life, the First Miracle. He never regretted fighting to protect it.

And for the rest of his life in that body, the Doctor would often sit up, alone, just himself and the TARDIS, and there would be moments…small, quiet moments without warning as a soft, sweet melody from another time rippled across the softened barriers of the Timeship.

The Cosmic Hobo rarely sang; he liked the extra coordination required with his recorder, but the Doctor remembered the words all the same.

"_Or we're promulgating knowledge of the Deep Phreatic Zone_

_And we're looking for some space to call our own…"_

* * *

Years passed, and more years after that. The Doctor still fought. He still grew a little harder from the wear and tear, but he never lost his optimism or his love of life—all life. He had his friends and companions. He even had his enemies to remind him of the important things.

It was moments like that, when his mind seemed most open to hearing those flowing strands of music from another time. And the TARDIS would hum along at times, singing along with herself in a sweet communication that he could almost fathom, but it was better to cherish a miracle rather than command a piece of magic to one's beck and call.

He knew, somehow, that of all the Doctors, he was the only one to tune into his past in such a way, and draw benefit. After most of a life plagued by the tortures of amnesia, it was a deep comfort. He grew to treasure each impossible moment as a personal moment of affirmation.

Sometimes he even sang along, his voice blending just barely above a whisper as the recorder's sweet tones rippled through the moments of soft time.

And he knew the moments were reciprocated, somehow, that the Cosmic Child was enjoying the times as much as he was.

Not that he had proof, mind you.

It was all circumstantial evidence.

Such as the first night he had alone after that awful, awful, **awful** collision with the Autons.

Instead of the usual "Forever on a Flowstone Moebius Strip", the recorder chose a different song from the inimitable Barb MacCleod:

_Plastic Justrite…_

_Plastic Justrite…_

_Melted on the front of my hard hat_

_I should have known better than to go and trust ya…_

_If I ever get out I will stomp and bust ya…_

Once the initial shock of recognizing that song from the early 1970's in Belize finished flickering through his mind, he threw back his head and laughed himself almost sick.

Or that night after he'd encountered the amazing indignity of disease-carrying, eternally ravenous blood-sucking clouds of intelligent hemiptera that came close to sucking the juices out of every form of life… (And for a not-so-refreshing change of pace, they really _really_ liked the taste of Time Lord…)

"_Never let a Ruduviidae Bug …. In Your Eye…"_

The Doctor laughed to himself and himself, shaking his head fondly and experiencing something that felt like a strangely healthy degree of self-liking. He felt…calm. Comfortable. Assured. He leaned his head back, his Bryonic face modeling into a sweetly peaceful expression as he lifted his hands before his chest, pressing his fingertips together, and studied them. They were small hands but beautifully proportioned, the nails kept trimmed and perfect. His hands were the best part he'd kept of his Last Self, he'd used to think; now he knew that Seven had their Second's hands.

He was just starting to realize how very much like his Second Self he was. Indeed, there was more of Two of him than he'd dared to realize. Perhaps this was why some of his otherselves looked upon him with that odd mixture of curiosity and sadness? Now that the thought had intruded, it was reluctant to leave. And when he parsed it in his mind it did look as though his past selves were…sad with longing.

And…Why was it, the Doctor sometimes thought to wonder, his second self, who loved space-travel so much, seemed to love the underground worlds with an equal enthusiasm? Perhaps it was because of what the caverns symbolized: The Last Unknown, Hidden in Plain Sight.

If so, the philosophy suited this wise old, cunning self, for he was more than clever, he was all but invisible. UNIT had entire cabinets devoted to himself in his third incarnation, and to a lesser extent, his fourth. Five came and went with all the swift-changing effects of a summer storm, but he never bothered to hide himself. Six likewise, never bothered to do something he wasn't meant to do, so hiding was never a part of his persona. Seven hid only his underlying intentions, never himself.

But the Cosmic Clown was as crafty, and ephemeral, and ghostlike as the Original Doctor, and could possibly be the only one who actually matched their Original's slightly-frightening level of intellect. The Doctor that he was now took no shame in the truth. His mind had been damaged from his survival regeneration—but he had survived and that was what was important.

Indeed, he'd learned that lesson long ago, waking up in his Third body, sickened with the realization that the Time Lords, his own people, had entered his mind without his permission, forced his body to change, and took possession of his brain. The horror of that violation never left him, though he hadn't been able to verbalise the sheer wrongness of it until the following regeneration. Four had been more than happy to school the Time Lords on their inability to control him. The booming Giant, the Titan of the Doctors, had physically been everything they wanted a Time Lord to be…and how they'd regretted their under-estimation of his strengths.

* * *

"I'm feeling a bit introspective, aren't I?" He asked the TARDIS. "I suppose it's natural." He studied the mosaic of wires and components in the ceiling above his head. "It's very odd, you know. If you count my years in Standard Gallfireyan, well…this is the longest I've lived yet!" Of course Susan had scolded him ferociously for "using up" so many lives, but that was the downside of choosing to live in a war zone called "involvement!"

"It is a strange feeling, to have experienced more than a few hundred years in one body. Some of my bodies never lived long at all. At least, I think so." He scratched his chin, brows bowed in thought. "I thought I'd lived no more than 50 years in my Second Body, a drop in the bucket…but it doesn't really matter how long one lives; it's how one lives. I supposed I feel a little out of sorts because it seems…strange to have been lucky enough to survive this long? Or maybe it isn't luck. Am I getting better at dealing with all this? When you think about it, it seems to go against the laws of physics that I survived the Daleks and Cybermen so many times in my first body!

"I think my Companions are the key to it," he added quietly. "They keep one's perspective _going_, you know. Pity that the Time Lords have forgotten the perspectives of other peoples. It means we forget as much as we learn." He sighed again and fell silent a moment more. "I should look up Fitz and Compassion and...maybe Grace once I get back on my feet."

Without a single blink to the moment, he got to his feet, leaned over the console, and tugged open a drawer. With a chuckle he pulled out a battered old recorder, and blew the dust out of it.

"The first time I met Fitz was the second time I'd played the Recorder since my Second Incarnation." He said to the Console. "I played Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and he wanted me to play "Please Please Me." The Doctor spun the little instrument in his hands, satisfied at how it felt to the touch. "I said, "Rubbish!"

He laughed then, and put it to his lips.

Nothing came out.

The Doctor's eyes crossed, then in a blink of suspicion, he removed the recorder, squinted at the mouthpiece, and felt his jaw drop.

"Oops."

He hastily unscrewed the false mouthpiece and studied it at close range. "Oh, dear. Is this the telescope alteration, or a modification for a blowpipe?" He squinted and held the end up to the light. "A single block of wood?" He blinked. "All right, I don't know _what_ I was thinking with making a mouthpiece that doesn't do anything, but I'm sure I had my reasons!"

And that was the key to his Second Self. Everything, even his play, had a reason.

_For all I know, all the spelunking songs are a trail of breadcrumbs to something I'm not supposed to know about yet..._

What started out as an idle thought stopped him dead in his tracks. Oh, that was more than just likely... He used the Recorder to signal back in the days, didn't he? He and Jamie and Victoria, and later with Zoe, had cooked up a whole language of hidden meanings with the recorder.

Hiding in plain sight.

"All right, I get it." He whispered. "I'll keep my eyes open. I promise. Hopefully the Doctors to follow will do the same, all right?" He tutted wryly. "There is such a thing as being _too_ clever, you know."

The Doctor dropped ithe modification back in the drawer, and rooted about. He found the blowpipe mouthpiece. It had something very strange inserted in the centre; then there was the telescope mouthpiece (itself modified to be a jeweller's loupe); a mouthpiece that had a disturbing modification for recording sound that made him chuckle: "A recorder that's a recorder!" And a few other additions—a corded tassel that was also a plumb bob. A tassel that was a nicely-disguised quipu rope for transacting in some Aztec marketplace. A tassel that was a string saw.

"Who needs a sonic screwdriver?" The Doctor asked in disbelief. "Was this made during a spell of insomnia? I hear they're particularly bad during one' s first three centuries of adulthood..."

And finally, a mouthpiece that actually was a mouthpiece.

The Doctor popped it in and warmed up with a few octaves up and down, up and down.

"Let's see…something with a message?" He wondered out loud. "Or something funny? Poignant? Humorous?"

He was just about to play a random collection of notes when a vaguely Bluegrass melody sailed through the walls of Time and out of the Console.

Well, 'vaguely Bluegrass' was a polite way to put it… The Doctor listened, lips parted and frozen in the act of playing—something—as bit by bit, the memory of the lyrics from Barb MaClleod trickled back into his psyche:

"_Life is Like a Carbide Lantern_

_With a plugged-up water drip…_

_As you sputter through existence_

_You will carbon up your tip…_

_With a felt of fate all sodden,_

_And the spark of hope kaput_

_Keep your thumb upon the flint-wheel,_

_And your eye upon your foot_

_You must bear life's broken gasket_

_Leaking troubles all the while_

_But keep a shine on your reflector_

_Through the countless dents of trial._

_Like is like an endless cavern_

_With an endless stream of neck-deep mud_

_As you drag the Tape of Toil_

_You must run before the flood_

_Tho' your survey team forsake you_

_In the Watercrawl of Strife_

_You must heed your obligation,_

_To the Catacomb of Life._

_Tho you never make your closures_

_And your stations wash away_

_Keep your mind upon life's purpose_

_Try to map a mile a day._

And with that, the last, lingering, sweet notes in the Key of D drifted away, absorbed by the soft hum of the TARDIS(es).

The Doctor was flabbergasted.

He was just opening his mouth to make a comment—whatever it was before the Walls of Time closed again, when there was a quick "cheep" as the Wall was quickly kicked open wide enough for—

**_Shave and a haircut_**

**_Six bits!_**

BANG! Went the Door back on Time.

The Doctor roared.

"Oh, you precocious brat," he laughed with ribs that ached from hilarity. "What a little brat I am!"

It was an assessment few would disagree with.


End file.
